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Saturday, January 20, 2018

3D Printed Box - Additional Features

Above: Box shown from above

Challenge: To produce a personalised box as a gift that is able to be used as a storage box.Background: Student had produced a series of basic prints, and was looking at producing a gift for a family member. She wanted to personalise the box with the name of the person it was intended for. Level of Difficulty: Medium. Tinkercad interface was used to produce the box shape. Student added additional features to the box to divide it into different areas and experimented with adding the hexagonal featured storage shape shown in the photograph. The personalisation of the box took the form of lettering that was sunk into two sides of the base of the box - which was not successful. (see below). Timeframe: Eight hours. The width of the sides (see below) should have been increased to provide more strength and depth to the sides of the box. The student ultimately decided not to produce a lid for this box as they wanted the box to be a stand alone design. Size: 8cm long by 9cm high. The box was 5cm high. The external wall of the box was 5mm. The internal walls (shown in illustrations) were thinned to 1-2mm.

Reverse side of the box with filament visible

Above: Front of box was deep lettering

What we would do differently: The internal walls were too thin. At 2mm they were not strong enough. While they have not yet broken the strength is clearly not there in basic testing. In addition at two points the internal wall stops short of touching the main external wall. This was created by student Tinkering. The lettering on the external side of the box was not successful. The name of the gift for the student ('Simone') was sunk deep into the base, when it was removed not all the materail could be successfully taken out, and the lettering itself was damaged. With the 'Love Georgia' inscription as shown clearly in the photograph above most of the filament rafting was removed easily, however there was filament that could not be removed as requires an additional tool to do so. The reverse side, shown below, when the rafting was carefully removed by the student resulted in damage to the font and the lettering. The lettering in this case was sunk too deep into the base of the box and lacked enough robust support for it to be shaped successfully.Next steps for the student: As mentioned in previous prints the design/ideas and format for boxes has been nearly exhausted by the students/classrooms efforts. Students (in this case a ten year old) have produced a variety of boxes and details of which have been increasingly detailed and complicated.